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8th Ed. Your take on Warhammer vs Online Games

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gapton

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edit : sorry I meant to post this in general but I must have clicked the wrong link out of habit without noticing. if a mod will move this to the appropriate place that would be nice thank you :)

So I am from Hong Kong, and about 15 years ago, Games Workshop gave up on the Hong Kong market and all the stores were shut down.

My box of Lizardmen sat quietly for years.

Earlier this year I discovered a local gaming club, in the form of an authorized reseller of Games Workshop products, they offer gaming tables and all the newest products.

Recently they got interviewed by a major TV channel, which is doing a series where they search for stores and shops in Hong Kong that keep some of the more traditional games, toys and figures alive.

So the gaming club got filmed and the show aired.

In the programme, they kept contrasting how "old school" the game of warhammer is, and how "different" it is when compared to "games", a word which has evolved to mostly mean "computer, digital games".

In an age where people stare at LCD more than faces, type lol more than they actually laugh. It may appear that we expect everything to be digital, bunch of pixels on screen and CPU calculating numbers for you. The show host contrast how "analogue" Warhammer is, to have real models, real painting, and real action, literally - cast of dices, shake of hands and a lot of face-to-face laughters, not just lol on a LCD.

This all brings back memories when I first walked into the Games Workshop 15 or so years ago.

I was a kid and I was already playing some sort of digital games, perhaps Play Station 1 or perhaps DOS games like Red Alert 1..... I was initially stunned by how people spent so much effort in preparing the models, the terrains and so on, to have a breath-taking army laid out in front of your arm's reach.

I admired the effort put in and the practice of keeping everything "real" back then.

So, what do you think that makes Warhammer a special game for you? How would you say the whole experience is different to mouse-clicking computerized games?
 
Personally, it's fellowship. I can link into a computer game, throw on a headset, talk to people and play a game, but I'm not enjoying the game with someone, even though I may have people on my team. Warhammer helps us get reach that age old necessity of the human condition which is true human interaction. With Warhammer, I am enjoying the game *with* someone. In a computer game, there's a screen. With Warhammer, there is the person. Warhammer forces us to slow down and appreciate the nuances of the game itself and the person across the table. I can get my backside handed to me a 1,000 times in Call of Duty by some unknown but familiar entity named "ReaperofFlesh" but it's abstract. In Warhammer, I get to meet "ReaperofFlesh." It's primordial. I get to see the warrior facing me, to see what he looks like, smells like, how he reacts and what his body does. I can see his tribe or clan, he is a representative of his people (he may be wearing saddles, shorts, a Sex Pistols shirt, have glasses and a beard). He is physically there and thus, more "real." My experience isn't hampered by lag time, server issues or anything else by way of Warhammer, unlike a computer game. With WFB, almost any delay is something I can personally, physically relate to as a general. Computer games may offer a three dimensional world, but it's still on a two dimensional surface. Warhammer gives us a very real multi-dimensional experience.**

**This is all "generally" speaking. I love me some Diablo, HALO and Call of Duty. :D :meh:
 
With the exception of the Diablo 3 game, I have little or no interest in video games. I lost interest about the time that I started up with the warhammer hobby. The hobby gives me the chance to paint, strategize, and play with the figures and initially was a way to have a common interest with one of my kids. In turn, my younger son took more interest in the hobby (he has fully pained one army and is working on another). My older son, who wanted to start with the hobby, shows almost no interest in the hobby now.

Another thing that I like about the hobby is that I can work on my miniature painting while in the same room with my wife and not feel like I am ignoring her (too much). When I play online video games, it takes all of my attention.
 
There are pros and cons of both worlds.

In tabletop games, you can customize a lot more. You want to change the rules? Go ahead. You don't like the head of a character model? Cut it off!. Don't like the back story? Make up your own. Since you put so much time and effort into your own characters and armies, you'll care more about them than you would to a video game character.

However, organizing a group of friends to all buy their own armies, paint them, bring them over and play can be quite a mammoth task. With video games, it's as easy as turning up with a bag of chips and soft drinks; and perhaps an extra controller. Also, computers are very good at keeping track of stats so the daunting task of remembering which units have how many wounds, whether you can move that far, etc. are taken care of the computer and therefore streamlining the gaming process.

All in all, video games offer a more instant satisfaction whereas tabletop gaming offers a more long-lasting one. This is my opinion.
 
I like playing with friends, be it Warhammer, role-playing games, table top games, video games... even football, if others are not too good at it (I suck at football). But the thing is, I DON'T like online games very much. I rather play by myself and much much much rather with a friend on the same couch. I agree with elmoheadbutt about video games giving a quick fix and others being rather more long term, but I want to have my games in a face-to-face environment.

About the thing that makes Warhammer (and other miniature games) unique is it's versatility; there's something for almost anyone. Most people collect, assemble, paint, plan and play, but usually one part is closer to their hearts than others. Warhammer let's you place your emphasis on the aspect you cherish the most, unlike role-playing games, where you have to be able to imagine your character and his actions, or video games, where you are need to perform certain tasks a certain way to be able to move forward. I'd say Warhammer is a multitude of different sub-hobbies all merged into a one is much more than the sum of it's parts and highly different from other hobbies.
 
Warhammer has the ability for someone who plays once a week to be just as good as someone who plays 20 hours a day - at the start of the game both sides are evenly matched, unless agreed before hand (ok some people may say one army is more powerful than another, but you get my point)

In contrast a video game is always balanced heavily in favour of the person playing 24 hours a day. As a person with a limited amount of time I have never been able to get into online games due to the fact I always get killed in 20 seconds by the guy if full top level gear who has played 10 hours a day for the past 2 years.

So I guess what I'm saying is the think I like about Warhammer more than online gaming is that even "casual gamers" are on an even footing once the match starts.
 
Tabletop gaming is a mixture of three aspects: the game, the arts and crafts and the historical/fictional background. Most players have a different mix of these three attributes often with one very predominate.

Most video games emphasise the game, only a few (which tend to have the biggest/most fanatical fans) put anything significant into the background and all ignore the arts and craft side of the hobby.

The high intensity gaming experience of video games gives a bigger immediate gaming hit but doesn't satisfy the deeper emotional and intellectual needs the way that a tabletop game can. The emotional connection you can achieve with a unit that you have customised, painted and researched cannot yet be matched in a computer no matter the customisations you can build in.

I am currently playing Battle Pirates on Facebook and have spent hours working on my base, but despite having spent more that ten times as long on the base I do not have anywhere as much affection for it as for the "Air Freshener of Doom" my scratch built EotG. Even though the AFoD was thrown to a deadline and budget (£7, £6.50 of which was the plastic dinosaur) it has a claim on my affections unmatched by any computer game I have ever played. I think because it is a product of my own hands rather than just because it rises spectacularly above the relative crudity of its assembly.

With warhammer as with the historical tabletop games if you don't dig into the background of your army, its history and motivations, and don't at least paint one unit in your army, you lose so much you might as well stick to video games.
 
With warhammer as with the historical tabletop games if you don't dig into the background of your army, its history and motivations, and don't at least paint one unit in your army, you lose so much you might as well stick to video games.
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This is the exact same way of thinking when I see models on eBay advertised as "Pro painted!!!" Sure, they may be pretty, but its not yours...
 
Another thing that I like about the hobby is that I can work on my miniature painting while in the same room with my wife and not feel like I am ignoring her (too much). When I play online video games, it takes all of my attention.
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THIS x 1000000

Ive tried playing MTGO and the like but its just not the same as sitting accross from a friend and playing the game. Warhammer is the same way when it comes to "gaming" I can play Diablo 3 for about 1 hour before getting bored because of no interaction.
 
Excellent thread guys, keep it going :)

I can certainly see the appeal of video/computer games and have at one time or another in my life been consumed by one game or another until I reached the end of the quest, blew up the deathstar or mastered the grunt rush, et al. But I have never stayed interested in any computer game much past that point, and have always looked back at the time I devoted to "winning" to be lost time. By contrast, I've been playing Warhammer for about 15 years now, and even in the times when I was mostly on hiatus due to raising my son, I could look at my shelf of miniatures with pride and hark back to some incredible tactical victory or extreme bit of luck and overall drama that felt a lot more like real life to me and gave me continuing satisfaction. This, and the friendships that I have forged over the years that have transcended the game, which I never got out of being in an online chat room situation with someone I was very unlikely to ever meet in real life, make tabletop gaming a far richer experience. Naturally we are all preaching to the converted here!
 
While I do love me some world of Warcraft, gears of war, and Warcraft 3 It will still never beat warhammer, as all the guys at my local game store are great people who I game and eat lunch with every saturday, and I've never even seen the faces of my guild mates online.
 
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